On May 15th the exhibition “The tree of sequins. Alternative money and means of exchange: from its origins to a future to be understood", created by the International Institute of Economic History Foundation "F. Datini” in collaboration with the Municipality of Prato - Palazzo Pretorio Museum, which can be visited at the Palazzo Pretorio Museum until 19 November 2023.

Curated by Angela Orlandi, the exhibition takes a long journey into the fascinating theme of money in history, and accompanies the visitor through a journey that is divided into various sections: from objects that can be defined as "money before money ”, up to virtual instruments such as electronic and digital money; a long excursus over time, a story made up of episodes chosen from documents and objects preserved in public and private collections, as well as in the rich archives and museums of the city.

An unprecedented exhibition, the first of its kind, which makes use of the collaboration of the Bank of Italy, the State Archives of Prato, the Textile Museum, the National Archaeological Museum of Florence, the Regional Directorate of the Museums of Tuscany and the Bernocchi family.

For the occasion, the Bank of Italy lent artefacts from a collection never shown before, made up of pre-monetary means of exchange, which anticipate the use of money itself: finds of all kinds, shells, weapons and jewels from all continents. The arrival of minted money is instead represented by the stater made in Turkey between the 6th and 4th centuries BC, by the money of Charlemagne, who introduced the lira into his empire, and by other silver specimens.

The family of Mario Bernocchi, late entrepreneur from Prato and famous collector of gold florins from Florence, has instead made numerous historical pieces of silver and gold available.

To explain the mechanisms that allowed the return to gold coinage, due above all to the economic strength of Tuscan textile production, the exhibition also makes use of a cloak and some pieces of cloth reconstructed by the Prato Textile Museum, as if they had come out of the workshop by Francesco Datini, alongside which fabric samples and documents from the inexhaustible Datini Fund are displayed.

Thanks to the precious collaboration of the State Archives of Prato, the exhibition then collects the first alternative payment instruments: letters of exchange, bank checks and written orders dating back to the 14th and 15th centuries.

The exhibition itinerary then continues with the first bearer banknote, minted in Italy by the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1746, while the conclusion is dedicated to the future: the panels and display cases leave room for the viewing of a film created by the multimedia laboratory of the University of Studies of Florence, dedicated to intangible currencies such as bitcoins and digital currencies.